With waves of flashy action flicks and popcorn farces crashing upon our shores, this summer’s film selection can feel like a desert of choices rather than an oasis away from the heat. This is what makes the luscious Italian import “I Am Love” such a treat. The film, screened at Huntington’s Cinema Arts Centre, centers around the wealthy Recchi family, who lords over a Milanese textile factory. In this mix of money and glamour, Emma (Tilda Swinton), the family’ mother, quietly prepares for a party in the film’s opening act. The party, in celebration of grandfather Edoardo’s (Gabriele Ferzetti) birthday, also harkens a new chapter in the family history as he passes the management of the company to his son and Emma’s husband, Tancredi (Pippo Delbonno) and Tancredi’s and Emma’s son, Edo (Flavio Parenti). Tancredi is business-oriented and Edo focuses on the factory’s integrity, which creates tension in the family accustomed to the authority of one patriarch. The idealistic Edo plans to build a restaurant with chef and friend Antonio (Edoardo Gabbriellini), whose talent and creativity captures Emma’s culinary and erotic attention. Emma, a Russian and outsider to the Recchi’s old-fashioned sense of unshakeability, happily observes Edo’s and her other children’s development, but feels stuck planning seating charts and menus for family events. She runs into Antonio in a neighboring town and is invited to his hillside home, where he and Edo plan to build their restaurant. Antonio and Emma’s mutual attraction erupts into a heated affair that threatens the future of the Recchi clan.
The film has been and is justly compared with those of Luchino Visconti, wherein familial strife flies to operatic heights only to crash into ruin. But “I Am Love” is more than a swirl of “The Leopard,” a dash of “The Damned” or a sprinkle of “Rocco and his Brothers.” Director Luca Guadagnino communicates drama through a different, sensual lens. His camera loves the landscape, from the luscious plating of food, to flowers flowing in wild grass, to the shimmer of Emma’s skin in the sunlight. And it is through this delicate and delectable filming that the viewer perceives Emma’s awakening into a new, richer life. The surging score by John Adams helps suggest this subcutaneous stirring into existence as Emma tries to become herself again—even if this evolution has a price above wealth.
By Natalie Crnosija